About us

The Sacramento Valley Garden Railway Society is the Garden Railroad Club for seven Counties in Northern California. Our members live in Butte, El Dorado, Nevada, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Sierra, and Yolo Counties.

The club was formed in 1989 to help garden railroaders and potential garden railroads build operate and maintain miniature trains indoors and outdoors.

Since its founding in 1989, the Sacramento Valley Garden Railway Society has helped garden railroaders enjoy the back yards even more with large scale trains running through them. Sounds of trains running through loops of greenery enhance the entire garden experience. We now have members in Butte, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Yolo Counties. The wide geographic area permits our members to construct replicas of lumber, mining, farming and urban railroads or all of these — or none of these! After all, the railroads belong to the members.

Much as we enjoy sharing photos with the public, when it comes to private SVGRS events and personal layouts it’s nice keep photos within the club. Please feel free to post your own photos here for your fellow members to enjoy. Contact us and we’ll help you post your photos (or post them for you!).

Large Scale Trains are generally powered by electricity, but some are actually powered by STEAM! Some members have live steam engines pulling the cars on their railroads. Some members operate their engines and trains on a portable modular layout, similar to those of their “sparkie” friends.

Modules are small tables designed to interconnect to form a much larger railroad display

These modules are about four foot square, and designed to be light-weight and portable. The layout itself is double tracked approximately 16 by 30 feet. The group usually sets up at home and garden shows, train shows, the State Railroad Museum, nurseries, etc.

Some tables are flat, and are decorated for the season, while one corner module consists of a mountain with tunnel and a flowing stream!

The Special Plant Reproduction interest Group (SPRIG) is our newest SIG. Since gardens are a major part of garden railroading, plants are much more important to garden railroaders than to “indoor” model railroaders.
Many garden railroaders want plants to be in proportion to the railroad locomotives and cars that wend their ways through back yard plantings. This is sometimes a hit or miss success, with many different things affecting the success of our plants.

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